The Dream Machine, Puzzle Agent 2, Children of the Nile, Anomaly: Warzone Earth, and Adventure Apes.

A new Indie Royale bundle is available, combining five games for much less than the sum of their worth. This time out it contains point-and-click adventures The Dream Machine (Chapters 1-3) and Puzzle Agent 2, civilization builder Children of the Nile: Enhanced Edition tower-offense game Anomaly: Warzone Earth, and Metroidvania platformer Adventure Apes and the Mayan Mystery.

That's pretty good value considering the quality on offer - the original PC release's blend of real time strategy and straightforward action won it a handsome 8/10 from Eurogamer back in April 2011. See our full Anomaly: Warzone Earth review for details.

There's this famous scene in the movie Patton. No, not the one where he stands in front of the American flag and talks about shooting the Hun in the belly. I'm talking about the scene where two tanks get stuck in mud during the Third Army's march across France, and General Patton hops out of his Jeep to direct traffic. The image switches to a close shot of Patton, and he's beaming. He revels in his conception of a great commander: one who's willing to put his own boots in the muck.

In Anomaly: Warzone Earth, you play a traffic cop in the Patton mould. When an alien invasion sets down in Baghdad, you're the commander on the ground, scampering around the battlefield in an exhausting effort to will your convoy of tanks and missile launchers into victory. Your character never fires a weapon; in fact, you're the tiniest thing on the screen – a mere mortal dancing through massive weaponry. Yet at the end of a battle, the smoking earth seems to bear your outsized thumbprint. Now I see what Patton enjoyed so much.

Anomaly is a reversal of the standard tower defence format: the evil, faceless aliens place towers along a path, and your troops attempt to survive their gauntlet. The switcheroo could be considered a gimmick if the developers at 11 bit studios weren't so clever about it. They haven't simply swapped roles; they've re-engineered the form.